About a week ago I was having a conversation with someone about a Russian friend of mine - a beautiful woman and a successful entrepreneur who had to kiss a few frogs before she had found her prince. It's not uncommon for intelligent, ambitious women to struggle to find a match: men are said to be intimidated by them. The man I was talking to suggested his own explanation which relates to Russian women in particular. "Russian women", he said, "are guilty of double standards. On the one hand, they want equal rights and opportunities but on the other hand, they expect men to do the DIY and buy them roses." Is that true? Are Russian women and women in general who want to get on in life but choose to look and behave in a traditionally feminine way guilty of having their cake and eating it?  And what should we do to avoid the unhappiness such alleged double standards cause us? 

Fortunately, the answer came to me just a couple of days later. I went to the Harold Pinter Theatre to see Conor McPherson’s new adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. The play, written in 1898 and widely performed ever since, goes some way to explain the female psyche we desperately need to change. 

In the play Sonya and her uncle Vanya manage the country estate which supports the urban lifestyle of Sonya's father and his second wife, Yelena, a young and glamorous woman who dazzles everyone during their brief stay in the countryside.  Sonya is bright, hard-working and kind. She is hopelessly in love with the local doctor, Astrov, who is in turn obsessed with Yelena. Sonya is in despair. She thinks she is ugly, certainly in comparison to beautiful Yelena. She sees herself as a pathetic grey mouse doomed to spinsterhood. A modern Instagram influencer would have told Sonya to own her assets: her ability to run the estate and her generous heart. But back in the 19th century Sonya was up against the force no positive mental attitude could have beaten. I'm talking about the patriarchy. 

The patriarchy made sure that women were judged first and foremost by their looks. Astrov the doctor knew very well that Yelena was an idle, empty person. She did no work, she had no hobbies. She constantly complained of boredom yet she thought teaching peasants' children or volunteering at a local hospital would be pointless and beneath her. Her indolence disgusted the doctor but he was in love with her because of her looks. Sonya would feed him, cared for him and listen to his woes but he simply didn't see her as a woman. 

In a patriarchal society there is only one set of values - the one established by men. In Chekhov's play, Sonya had no chance. A woman's worth was set by her beauty and that paradigm has been internalised by Sonya and generations of women after her. A Russian woman does not need to go to the theatre to admire the timelessness of Uncle Vanya. By and large the society and its attitudes towards women haven't changed that much. 

A modern woman might not realise it, but she has been born with misogyny deep inside her DNA. How many times have you seen a woman wearing make-up at a 7am gym class? Last September when I told my father that Bianca Andreescu beat Serena Williams in the US Open Final, his response was: "The Canadian? Not a beauty, that one".  It is common knowledge that female politicians receive a disproportionate coverage of their outfits rather than deeds. The virtue of femininity is not just about the looks. Harvard researchers found in 2010 that voters in the US regarded “power-seeking” women with contempt and anger, but saw power-seeking men as stronger and more competent. No wonder female candidates in the current primaries are having a hard time to convince voters. 

The internalised misogyny is what's driving some women to play damsel in distress or appear less intelligent than they actually are because our society is still stuck in the so called traditional ways of valuing women for their femininity. A woman may well choose to play a role of a DIY ignoramus and to show particular appreciation for flowers just to fit the stereotype. In Britain, a third of women earn more than their male partners, and most of them lie about their salaries no doubt to preserve fragile male egos. 

Dear readers, it is our responsibility to change the norms we inherited from Chekhov's Doctor Astrov and his 19th century pals. When considering female politicians, let's assess their competence not their likability. When complimenting young girls, let's use "strong", "kind" and "smart" at least as often as "pretty".  Let's celebrate women's ability to choose whether to have children, whether to become a stay-at-home mum or return to work after maternity leave and whether to look feminine or androgynous.

​As a Russian, I admire the longevity of Chekhov's plays but as a woman I despair. I honestly wish that one day we'd watch Sonya's anguish and Doctor Astrov's blindness and think "I can't relate to that at all."

Have you ever felt that making a wish when blowing out your birthday candles is a bit pointless? I think I might have come up with a better idea… 

A couple of months ago I was travelling in Ethiopia, an incredibly diverse and interesting country with stunning mountains and ancient Christian churches. I loved it but at times I found the experience a little exasperating when kids in rural areas would run towards me chanting “Pen, pen!” or sometimes “Money!”. It’s been a while since I’ve travelled to a country where kids pester tourists quite so much. My guides tried to tell me that it was their way to practise English but if that were so, “Welcome to Ethiopia” would be a better way to start a conversation.

It might be that my experience of local people in the countryside of Ethiopia came in such a contrast with my recent travels in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. In Kyrgyzstan, when I was hiking in the mountain pastures and was passing a shepherd’s yurt, I was often invited to come in for a cup of tea. The locals would offer me bread and freshly churned cream and would absolutely refuse any money I tried to offer them as a thank you. Hospitality is of course something Central Asia is renowned for which makes travelling there incredibly special. 

Thinking about my experience in Ethiopia made me wonder whether kids who grow up asking for gifts become adults who expect them. It might be a crude extrapolation, but we can all think of people expecting to win a lottery rather than investing in their health, education or personal development. Indeed, our culture makes a habit of wishful thinking and I for one don’t think it’s a helpful one. What good would it do to remind yourself that there is something you lack?

Ever since I remember, I was encouraged to make a wish when blowing out candles on my birthday cake. I don’t actually celebrate my birthday that often but opportunities to make a wish are plentiful: think New Year’s Eve, shooting stars, rainbows, four-leaf clovers, five-petal lilac blossom, three cherries joined together by a stem, finding a lucky Russian dumpling, breaking a wishbone, finding a coin head-side up, crossing bridges, etc.. I would always ask for something grand and abstract. In recent years I’ve only ever wished to get my health back. You may say that my wish has come true as I’m now feeling much better but I have another explanation.

What has really helped me to live better with a chronic condition (I have myalgic encephalomyelitis also known as Chromic Fatigue Syndrome) is to accept it and then learn to live with it. One practice that really made a difference to every aspect of my health was to notice little things which made me happy and to recognise small improvements with gratitude. When I stopped working due to ill health I noticed for the first time that there were birds, mostly blackbirds, which sang right outside my apartment block in the very metropolitan area of London. Even on dark February mornings they sang! Previously, I never had breakfast at home. I would rush to work and grab something to gobble up in front of my computer. After I left my job, I was still waking up early and I would cook porridge or make a smoothie and take my time to have a pot of coffee, taking in my immediate environment. I also wrote a gratitude diary which would list three things a day, nothing more profound than “I’m grateful I talked to my mum today” or “I’m grateful I found time to read today, not just watch TV.”

A few years later on a holiday in South Africa I got up early one morning and climbed to the top of Lion's Head in Cape Town. I remember the profound sense of joy and gratitude I felt. It did not bother me in the slightest that some people ran up that hill and that they probably did that every day as their exercise routine. I remember feeling so happy – it was actually my birthday and there was no cake, no candles and no expectations to wish for anything more. 

So here is a thought: what if each time you blow out your birthday candles or spot a shooting star, you remember to swap a wish for a gratitude? Rather than wishing “to get my health back”, I would think “I’m so grateful that I have plenty of energy for a party with friends”. Happy thoughts not wishful thinking make us content.

Social scientists such as Tal Ben Shahar and Yuval Noah Harari have been writing on the latest scientific thinking on happiness. What I took away from their books personally is that we feel unhappy when we want something and we can’t have it (e.g trying for a baby unsuccessfully or missing out on a promotion). Conversely, when we don’t build up any expectations and live like nothing is amiss, we feel much happier. Learning to live in the present and appreciating what we have is key to a happy life. Fortunately, there are simple techniques to train your mind to get there.

Back in 2015 I wrote about gratitude being scientifically proven to enhance wellbeing. In his book 59 Seconds Richard Wiseman quotes psychologists Robert Emmons and Michael McCollough who conducted an experiment, investigating gratitude and subjective well-being (2003). Three groups of people were asked to spend a few moments each week writing. The first group listed five things for which they were grateful, the second noted down five things that annoyed them and the final group jotted down five events that had taken place during the previous week. The 'gratitude' group remarked on seeing the sunset or on the generosity of their friends. The 'annoyed' group wrote about bills and arguments. The 'events' group detailed making breakfast and driving to work. The results were startling. Compared to those in either the 'annoyed' or 'events' groups, those expressing gratitude ended up happier, much more optimistic about the future, physically healthier and even exercised significantly more. Similarly, research by Seligman, Steen, Park and Peterson (2005) suggests that writing a gratitude diary every day for a week makes one happier and more resilient with the effects which may persist for months.

I have recently spent some time with two ten-year-olds I have known all their lives. I am fascinated to watch them grow but I'm also wary about their personal development being shaped by the modern culture.  For example, both of them are already aware of different iphone models and the perceived status of owning the latest one. I'm not their parent but even I want to exclaim: “Don’t grow up too soon!”. I want them to learn to appreciate little things like going out for a proper Italian pizza or being engrossed in a book. I want them to learn to recognise what they already have and understand that much is possible if they put their mind to it. I rather they try and fail than simply day dream. But I know that the only person I can influence with some success is myself. From now on I’ll start counting rainbows as blessings and see whether that takes me to the proverbial pot of gold. 

How to read in 2020?

The answer is widely. 

Think diversity - not in the overused corporate virtue-signalling context - but rather in a sense of striving to consume many different opinions, expressed by people who live in a different land, age and circumstances. Travel the world through works of fiction and sprinkle a little foreignness onto your customary Anglo-Saxon fare. Take up new genres: a sci-fi adventure or a fantasy tale may well surprise you. Not convinced? Putin's latest move to give more power to State Council, a previously advisory parliamentary committee in Russia, surprised many. Interestingly, in his latest book The Secret Commonwealth: a Book of Dust Volume II, Philip Pullman described just such a move (and its consequences) by a scheming central character, Marcel Delamare. Still think children's fantasy books are not your thing?

Last year I was inspired to diversify my reading list as much as possible. Rather than choosing to read  more female authors (something male readers are statistically proven guilty of ignoring - a little hint right there!) or to vary genres, I decided to focus on international fiction.  I made it deliberately a little difficult: once I read an English writer, all English fiction was off the list until the next year. As a result, I simply had to seek out writers from different corners of the world. I did well. Here is a full list of countries I have "travelled" to last year:

Afghanistan (Kite Runner), Belarus (Chernobyl Prayer), Canada (Station Eleven), England (Lady Chatterley's Lover), France (Adele), Germany (Alone in Berlin), Iran (Persepolis), Ireland (The House of Names), Israel (Liar), Italy (I'm Not Scared), Japan (The Last Children of Tokyo), Kyrgyzstan (Jamilia), Latvia (Soviet Milk), Nigeria (My Sister the Serial Killer), Pakistan (Unmarriageable), Russia (Rock, Paper Scissors), Romania (The Land of Green Plums), South Korea (The Vegetarian), Sweden (Let the Right One In), Switzerland (Agnes), Syria (Death at Intervals), Turkey (Red Haired Woman) and the USA (White Houses).

That's nice stats. So what has made my reading journey so spectacular? Here are my thoughts.

I contemplated things from a different perspective. 
Russians and Brits alike love reading books about the Second World War. There is, if we are ready to admit this to ourselves, a certain comfort in a familiar angle. The Nazis are sometimes referred to as simply the Germans. The baddies are based in Berlin. You get the gist. A friend of a friend recommended I read Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada, a classic novel about the grassroots resistance in 1940s Berlin. The original German title of the book is even more poignant: "Every Many Dies Alone". It is a devastating but also a humorous and a life-affirming novel which placed me in a seemingly unfamiliar setting. Yet some pages in I was nodding as I was reading about repressions, fear, neighbours who reported each other to the authorities and ordinary people being extraordinary brave. 

I felt humbled by my own ignorance. 
I was six years old when a nuclear reactor exploded in Chernobyl on 26 April 1986. It is now common knowledge that the Soviet authorities did everything to suppress the news and the extent of the catastrophe. Indeed, Mikhail Gorbachev, who was in power at the time, didn't make a public announcement about Chernobyl until after the 9 May, the Victory Day public holiday in the Soviet Union. Chernobyl disaster eventually made it front-page news but up until recently my understanding of it was limited. It was a tragedy for the Ukraine, which still bears scars. I had no idea though about the catastrophic effect Chernobyl had on Belarus until I read Svetlana Alexievich's brilliant oral history book Chernobyl Prayer: Voices from Chernobyl. 

I have read nearly all the books by the Nobel-prize winning Belorussian author so I should have known what I was getting myself into. Her books are without exception - painful, raw, brutal and shocking. Yet nothing prepared me for Chernobyl: I was in tears first few pages in. Perhaps, I am not selling this book well. It certainly isn't a dreamy romantic novel. Just trust me when I say this: read this book. It is the oral history of humanity set in a place few of us have been to or will ever visit. Travel there with Alexievich and let her be your guide. 

I felt inspired to travel to new places. 
Anyone been to Pakistan? Keen to explore Lahore? I am. Unlike my previous recommendation, Unmarriageable, a retelling of Pride and Prejudice based in modern day Pakistan, is a joyous and light read. The author, Sonia Kamal, has been obsessed with Jane Austin all her life. This is her tribute to the master storyteller. Kamal stayed true to the classic plot, but she also managed to fill her work with delicious Pakistani cuisine, local customs and wonderful philological tidbits. A middle-class Pakistani who speaks better English than Urdu is apparently colloquially called a "burger", while if your English isn't up to scratch, you'd be referred to as "paratha". Wonderful, isn't it?

I discovered brilliant books I should have read a long time ago. 
Ever heard raving reviews of a recently published book from several different sources and thought "I'm too cool to jump on this bandwagon, I'll let the dust settle first."? Me too. The more accolades something receives the greater my resistance. The thing is - books won't go anywhere. The good ones will stay and bring joy years later. Up until last year I have not read the Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. Thankfully, as I was browsing articles with recommendations on international fiction, I came across this bestseller and immediately ordered a copy. It deserves every praise it gets. 

I read my first ever graphic novel.
I ran out of books during a weekend trip to Slovakia. Fortuitously, I stumbled upon a bookshop with an English section. It's always interesting to see what gets stocked in a fairly random place like Bratislava. Marjani Satrapi's bestselling graphic memoir, Persepolis was on the shelf.  It's the most delightful read and a great way to try to understand modern Iran. 

I stumbled upon a real gem. 
I was opportunistically looking through a book selection in a charity shop in Chiswick when I saw a slim volume with a familiar name: Chingiz Aitmatov. Aitmatov was a Kyrgyz-born Soviet writer, who wrote both in Russian and Kyrgyz, famous for his novels, such as "A Day Lasts Longer than a Century", but I haven't read anything by him myself. I bought his novella Jamilia and was deeply touched by a beautifully told love story. Russian prose like Russian classical music has an unmistaken cadence to it. Enthralling. 

I discovered people who share my passion for international fiction. 
I picked up a copy of Soviet Milk by a Latvian writer Nora Ikstena at Waterstones on Piccadilly. It was beautifully bound and published by Pereine, a publishing house specialising in contemporary European fiction. I enjoyed Ikstena's story about three generations of women in Soviet Latvia, which, by the way, made my weekend trip to Riga especially enjoyable. I also learned that Pereine Press runs a subscription service where you can sign up to receive their well-curated new books. Indeed, this model allows them to make bold choices, commission new translations regularly and let readers discover books outside the mainstream market. It makes a wonderful present too!

I hope I made a convincing argument to read more widely. 
​
"We need sometimes to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard, in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment no matter what."

George Santayana said this about travel, but I think it relates to books too. 

This article was originally published on 15 October 2019 by Sifted.eu, the FT-backed media site for European start-up and VC news.

I spent the last weeks of the summer in the mountains of Central Asia. Hiking through high altitude pastures in Kyrgyzstan, I met shepherd families who welcomed me with tea or kumys (fermented mare’s milk) in their simple yurts and showed me how it’s possible to live simply yet generously. A 15-year-old schoolgirl (who spoke four languages), who was helping her mother look after Western tourists at a homestay, told me she wanted to become a paediatrician and help families who don’t have access to medicine in remote Kyrgyz villages.After a fortnight of travelling through breathtaking landscapes and enjoying genuine hospitality I came back to London transformed.

Going through funding applications in my inbox, I simply couldn’t get excited by a new app promising to find the coolest new London eateries, and yet already it has raised pre-seed capital. An entire generation of startups seem to target young shopaholics; from apps that offer kickbacks on peer-to-peer brand recommendations to fintech apps that help millennials save money for “guilt-free luxury shopping”.  Investors appear to be obsessed with memory foam mattresses, taxi-hailing apps, electric scooters and ready meals like these are the most important problems on the planet.

On returning from holiday, I set up meetings with healthtech companies, which are already making a real difference despite their early stage. One such business, Span, cofounded by software engineer Patrick Samy, helps type 2 diabetes patients reverse their condition through personalised advice on dieting and fasting. Another startup, Spill, cofounded by Gavin Dhesi, offers message-based therapy as a business to business (B2B) service, enabling companies to offer accessible professional counselling to their employees. Investing in such businesses comes with a number of risks, an integral part of venture capital, but the rewards of helping them succeed go beyond financial returns.

The holiday did not make me completely take leave of my senses. All our companies have to make money. But it gave me a renewed appreciation of what really matters to the world. I think that all venture capital companies should be challenging themselves when making investment decisions. Just as consumers are beginning to ask: “Do I need this plastic straw in my drink?”, venture capital companies should be asking: “Do people need another Instagram-like app on their phone?”

There is a misconception that impact businesses grow at a slower pace than purely commercial enterprises. At a recent event, Building Global Impact Ventures by Female Founders, organised by Cazenove Capital and Mustard Seed VC, Saasha Celestial-One, the cofounder of OLIO, explained that, thanks to its mission to reduce food waste, OLIO receives wide press coverage for free because journalists love writing about it. The founders were able to hire the best talent because experienced professionals often look for meaningful work while legal, consulting and PR firms compete to represent them.

​Stellar teams and impressive traction attract capital. It is not a coincidence that sustainable condiment brand Rubies in the Rubble raised £2.1m earlier this year. Once you realise that consumers today seek out sustainable brands and that corporations put social responsibility at the top of their agenda, investing in impact businesses is not just the right thing to do – it’s smart too.

It must be daunting to be a start-up founder not least because these days the resources available to help budding entrepreneurs are limitless. There are blogs by intrepid VC and angel investors, articles published by tech-focussed media; there are talks, podcasts and office hours where seasoned investors help entrepreneurs with advice, speed-dating style.

If you are a founder about to embark on a fundraising journey (a cliché but really it is a journey: challenging, enervating and ultimately, if the stars align, rewarding), I want to offer some practical advice.
 
I’ve come across plenty of online tips in terms of contents of an investor presentation. Medha Agarwal has summarised 10 essential components of a fundraising pitch deck. Ultimately, it all depends on the stage of your business but the ingredients suggested here are the right ones. My only additional advice would be that you must ensure your deck tells a story. The slides should flow well. Even if you are sending out your deck rather than presenting it in person, try to read the presentation aloud and see whether its narrative flows. If it doesn’t, make it as consistent and engaging as possible.
 
My own practical tip is this: hire a graphic designer.
 
At Silvergate Investments, we get several pitches each week. I am seriously impressed with the presentation quality of the decks I receive. Some of them are works of art! I came to believe that regardless of the content, the visual presentation is incredibly important. This is because – for better or for worse – we tend to judge the book by its cover, so it’s essential to make a good first impression. The design of your deck is also important because you are competing for investor attention with other opportunities. If other entrepreneurs looking for capital send me outstanding looking decks, you need to do the same. Trust me, home-made Powerpoint presentations with busy slides and inconsistent fonts look really bad in comparison to professionally designed decks.  

​I asked entrepreneurs who sent me some of the best-in-class pitch decks to refer the designers they had used to help tell their growth stories. Jess Hook, the founder of non-alcoholic wine Outfox, worked with a freelance designer Hannah Bloomfield.  Her pitch was beautifully designed, convincing and demonstrated a big vision, as well as attention to detail. 

The founder of Niche Tea startup, Amanda Miles Ricketts, sent me a deck with gorgeous images of her tea which signalled "premium" and "luxury". She worked with John Gilsenan of IWANT design agency. 

The pitch deck by Yang Liu for her business Just Wears, a male underwear line, was fun and playful, reflecting the brand perfectly. Yang used Adobe's InDesign software to create the deck herself(!). 

The founders of a HealthTech start-up Heally, based in New York, worked with Ariel Kohan of Pitchdeck XYZ. I learned that the US was ahead of the game with agencies specialising in pitch deck services and showcasing presentations which had helped to raise millions of dollars in funding. 

Diana Greenhaulgh, co-founder of MyBespokeRoom, an online interior design marketplace for consumers and SAAS for designers, had a chuckle when I asked her if she had used a designer for her great deck. "We live and breathe design, Jana, of course I created the deck myself!". She used Canva, a freemium online publishing tool (and now a $2.5bn company), to help visualise her fundraising story. 

These insights apply to the corporate world beyond start-ups too. I bet investment banks and corporates still use dull and busy looking powerpoint slides... If you are putting together a presentation for a new project or a change in strategy, it would really pay to invest in design. Just as when we are listening to a speaker and take in her attire, posture, mannerisms and tone of voice before we digest the contents of her speech - the style, colours and typography of your presentations make the first impression before we pay attention to words and figures. 

As for the founders who often find that they don't get a meeting and the only pitch they get to present to a VC is the deck  they sent across by email, it literally pays to put your best foot forward. 

At the end of last year I read a curious article What I learnt from a year of reading only books by women by Alice Fishburn, the editor of the FT Weekend Magazine. The author of the article realised that she ordinarily read mostly male writers and decided to give herself a challenge of reading women only for a year. It turned into a fun and thought-provoking experiment. "No one is trying to explain women to me. Female characters and viewpoints suddenly simply exist: whether flawed or flaming, badly drawn or richly nuanced. There they are without spin. Unexplained. Unfiltered. Understood."

Inevitably, Fishburn's article provoked a bit of a sour reaction from some. Some people said they chose what to read regardless of gender, as long as it was good... Is it a fair point? I don't think so. Granted, literary prizes are usually won by men and male writers are published more than women which means that we mostly read novels by male authors. But what if it was a vicious circle? What if we made an effort to buy more books by female writers; the publishers will surely notice and start publishing more women which will lead them to win prizes more often. All we need to do is create more demand for women's fiction and as a result our bookshelves and minds will become more diverse.

Ah, diversity. You knew I'd end up slotting this word in and indeed here it is. Inspired by Fishburn, I wanted to make my reading more diverse this year. Normally I read pretty widely in a sense that I read both fiction and non-fiction, and I often pick up a crime or a sci-fi novel. I make sure I read at least a couple of books a year in Russian, which is always a treat. At the beginning of January I read an article about books which are likely to make some noise this year (e.g. "The Testaments" by Margaret Atwood) and I realised that most authors mentioned were Anglo-Saxon. Indeed, those of us who live in the UK or in the US mostly read British or American authors. And yet when Elena Ferrante or Stieg Larsson come along, we devour their books. What if I gave myself a challenge this year to read novels by authors of different nationalities without repeating them? Now that's an idea.

By the time I came up with this plan, I have already read "Lady Chatterley's Lover" by the English classic D.H. Lawrence,  a dystopian novel "Station Eleven" by Emily St. John Mandel and Amy Bloom's "White Houses", historical fiction about Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok. I have spent my biggest Anglo-Saxon credits and had to get more creative at once!

Getting  book recommendations was easy. My German friend Anne advised me to read Peter Stamm, a Swiss author, whose many novels had been translated into English. I read his early novella "Agnes" about a relationship between a writer and his muse, set in Chicago. I then picked up "Adèle", the latest book by the author of "Lullaby", Leïla Slimani. Slimani lives in France and writes in French but she was born in Morocco. "Adèle" is a short introspective novel about a woman addicted to sex. It was not until "Jamilia" by Chingiz Aïtmatov that my little project has finally borne fruit. 

Chingiz Aïtmatov (1928-2008) is a Kyrgyz-Soviet writer who wrote both in his native Kyrgyz and in Russian.  He wrote "Jamilia" in Russian in 1957. It's a novella about love set in a small Kyrgyz aul (village) at the time of the Second World War. It's "a simple and beautiful evocation of time, place and the power of love... deserves to be known as one of the world's great and timeless love stories", says a review by Booktrust. I was taken away by the beautiful narrative of a master storyteller: it's impossible to believe that it took Aïtmatov less than 100 pages to transport me to another world and make me long for it days after I finished the book. I would not have picked this slim volume from a charity bookstore in Chiswick unless I was deliberately looking for an unusual author to read. 

My challenge has proven to be highly infectious. I received many tantalising recommendations in the last few weeks and my Kindle is now brimming with samples. My agent and friend Charlotte said I should read "The Last Children of Tokyo" by Yoko Tawada, while my Japanese friend recommended me "Let the Right One In" by a Swedish author John Ajvide Lindqvist. The shop assistants at Waterstones in Covent Garden asked whether they could give me their favourite books by international authors and now my list has "The Vegetarian" by a Korean author Han Kang and "The Radetzky March" by an Austrian Joseph Roth. I ordered a novel by the Romanian author Herta Müller, who, as it turns out, won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2008.  I had no idea! 

The possibilities are endless. Even if you are not a fan of translated fiction, just going through a pile of books by Irish, Scottish, Australian, South African, Canadian, English, US and Indian writers would get you through to the summer at the very least. It's a superb opportunity to dive into Nordic Noir (think Iceland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland) or perhaps go for a French classic (Colette? Hugo? Camus?). It's your time to tackle "War and Peace" (although I personally would suggest "Anna Karenina" instead). 

There is something magical in setting yourself a reading challenge. It's vastly more pleasant than trudging through a Dry January or a similarly depressing New Year resolution. And it seems to have weaned me off telly for a while. I am now reading Michelle Obama's "Becoming" (non-fiction is off the challenge) but I am already looking forward to diving back into fiction. The more weird and wonderful, the better. Happy reading!

When I first started looking at start-ups to fund via Silvergate Investments,  a good friend advised me to keep track of our investment decisions. Usually, investors take care to write down why they like the business, but noting the reasons for saying "No" is perhaps even more important. If an opportunity I declined ends up being the next big thing, I want to remind myself why I had missed it. More generally, it's good practice to keep a record of our decision-making process and make sure it is as objective as possible.

When I decline an opportunity to invest in a start-up, I always try to give feedback to the founders. It tends to be short and to be point, but it's important to do that rather than just say "No". Sometimes I say "No" rather reluctantly which makes it vital for me to explain my decision both to myself and to the founders. Perhaps it is also useful to share some trends, which may help start-ups pitch better and understand what a typical decline actually means.

1. It's too early.
This is a reason, which comes up a lot. Sometimes I say "too early" to a business which is already revenue-generating but if you are a brand making £300K a year having been around for 8 years, your size may be a reflection of a poor product-customer fit. I cannot invest to scale a business which is not destined to grow.

2. I cannot tell who will be the winner in this market. 
 I look at a lot of consumer-facing businesses and some have impressive founders, technology and even traction. However, if it is a competitive market segment where customer acquisition is a function of marketing spend rather than visible points of difference such as barriers to entry, strong brand, superior product, loyal customers etc. then I have  no way of telling whether it's my horse which will win the race. It's investor's nightmare to be pumping money into competing marketing budgets. Want a good example? Consider direct-to-consumer mattress businesses Casper, Simba, Eve and every Tom, Dick and Harry. They will drive down any hope for making a profit by their aggressive marketing spend. 

3. I don't have the confidence in the founder. 
This may sound like an obvious one but since most of my deal flow consists of female-led businesses, it's a tricky point to consider. Women are sometimes underselling themselves so I'm not looking for overabundant confidence in the founders I meet. Instead, I look for experience, track record, willingness to listen, ability to learn quickly, management skills and grit. Sometimes I come across businesses with good products but when I speak to the founder(s), I doubt their ability to execute their plan. Once I spoke to the founders running a skincare business who said: "Once we become big, we will obviously need to hire a more experienced CEO to manage the business as we don't have the experience." In reality, it's probably much harder to raise a start-up from the ground up than to run a fast-growing, cash-generative beauty brand. Their words have put me off. No one wants founders with a defeatist attitude. 

4. I know nothing about the industry.
Last week I was sitting at a pitch clinic listening to a presentation by a business which aims to disrupt the TV industry. I happen to know quite a bit about the TV market having worked in the industry for three years, so I was both entirely on board when presented with the "disruption" plan AND I also knew that it would be nearly impossible to execute it. This is why I tend to decline opportunities in HealthTech (unless they are B2C) or GovTech or specialist business services. Quite simply I don't have any industry insights, and if the business encounters problems down the line, I'd be kicking myself for investing an in industry I was unfamiliar with.  

5. It's boring.
I think this is what clever people call lack of investor-founder fit. If I'm yawning while I'm reading your deck then no matter how clever your solution is, I won't engage with it. I won't promote it as an investor because I wouldn't be proud of it. When things go wrong as they often do, I will be too annoyed with myself for having to understand the intricacies of accounting software market to be able to help you effectively. 

There are plenty of other reasons which can be industry-specific or relate to the business model. What may not appeal to me in the UK may well appear attractive in India. I have even passed on oversubscribed opportunities before, and I had good reasons for that.

I saw other investors develop some kind of score system to rate an investment opportunity and perhaps it is helpful to them. For me, a score card would only help validate the answer I already know and sometimes it's not even 100% objective.

​As a final point, it helps to remember than investing in one company means necessarily forfeiting an investment in another startup that comes along next. It's about an opportunity cost - my good old economics degree is making itself useful. 

This article was first published as an op-ed by the Financial Times on 18 September 2018.

I was recently at a networking event chatting to a man in his thirties I recognised from university. Like me, he invests in start-ups, so we got on well, peppering the conversation with obligatory industry jargon.

“Are you investing based on product-market fit or just MVP (minimum viable product)?” he asked. I explained that we considered all stages, told him about the sectors we liked, and then I detonated what I knew would be the bomb: “We only invest in women, or men from minority backgrounds.”

“So you are a philanthropist?” he offered. “Good for you!”

He had hit on one of the three standard responses from men I get when I mention that I prioritise female entrepreneurs.

First: “So you are a charity?” This view suggests that women need help from altruistic donors to get their businesses going.

Second: “Ah! You are a social impact fund!” This response insinuates that women cannot possibly make you rich, so there needs to be a social mission attached to give an investor something virtuous to talk about at dinner parties.

Third: “Great, but why would you limit yourself?” This may seem like a fair comment, but if you asked me about my deal flow I would tell you that I reviewed more than 100 opportunities in six months and was blown away by the quality of applications.

Then there is the feedback I get most from women: “Fantastic!” Go figure.

I am neither a charity, nor am I particularly driven by a social mission. Like any investor, my business partner, Waheed Alli , and I want to make money. We invest in women and minority men because such opportunities are largely overlooked — and therefore attractive.

The entrepreneurs I meet often thank me for a “refreshing” conversation, which makes me wonder what kind of questions they get asked by other investors. Tania Boler, co-founder of Elvie, which makes pelvic floor trainers, was told her product was too niche to be backed. That is despite the findings she presented showing that one in three women experience pelvic floor problems and one in 10 will require surgery.

Raising money as a woman is hard. I hear stories about investors stringing female founders along for months, dangling offers of funding, and then asking them out on a date instead. Male entrepreneurs are 86 per cent more likely to be venture capital funded and 56 per cent more likely to secure angel investment, according to a 2017 study from the Entrepreneurs Network. As a result, only 9 per cent of global VC funding in the first quarter of this year went to companies with at least one female founder, according to TechCrunch.

This lack of investment is closely correlated with the number of women in decision-making roles in VC. Before we backed Tessa Cook, co-founder of neighbour-to-neighbour surplus food-sharing app Olio, she met with dozens of potential investors. “My conversion rate of female investors was over 75 per cent, whereas male venture capitalists converted at less than 10 per cent,” she said.

Women-run businesses may well be overlooked because of subconscious bias. Investment is all about risk assessment and a male investor will understandably find it easier to relate to a man who went to the same school as him, or has similar interests. A woman pitching a tampon subscription business to a team of men will not enjoy much rapport. Early-stage investing in particular relies less on hard data and more on gut feel.

But there is plenty of evidence to suggest that a mainstream VC investor is missing the trick. First Round Capital published a report finding that the female-founded companies in its portfolio outperformed male-founded companies by 63 per cent, as measured by return to investors over 10 years.

​If venture capitalists want a slice of that pie, they need to hire women investors and give them the power to make investment decisions. After all, why limit yourselves?

​I leave sizzling August heat behind and enter a cool, faintly damp corridor lit by harsh LED light. The door behind me - a foot thick - remains opened (I turn around to check). I'm now inside Tirana’s largest underground bunker, built in the 1970s to accommodate the entire Albanian government in case of a nuclear attack. It was one of the 173,000 bunkers constructed on the orders of the paranoid communist leader Enver Hoxha. After the fall of communism in Albania in 1991, most of the bunkers scattered around the country were abandoned. This one has been converted into BUNK’ART, a history museum.

As one of few visitors, I can't help but feel the oppressing chill of the place. Here is Hoxha’s office and bedroom with a spartan single bed. Here is a cupboard with gas masks should you wish to venture out. Unbelievably, there is even a large assembly hall inside. In other rooms museum curators have chosen to show the history of Albania in black and white photographs covering the country’s occupation by Italian fascists in 1939-1943, German invasion in 1943-1944 and isolated communist dictatorship under Hoxha until his death in 1985. The exhibition is excellent. It unnerves and devastates. ​

Back outside I am grateful for the sunlight. I catch a ray cheekily pointing to a fig tree with a handful of ripe fruit. I help myself to a few honey-dripping figs and catch a bus back into the centre of Tirana. Here I join a walking tour led by a couple of local guides. It’s not the sights that I am after - I want to learn about the people who have inherited the country’s painful history. I am not disappointed. The guide Eri, who is in his early 40s, tells us many personal anecdotes which help to understand Albania today. He recalls how Christian missionaries arrived in Tirana and used to give out free chocolates after sermons. Eri attended the sermons diligently every Sunday because he had never even tasted chocolate before. And then he tells us a story about bananas, which first appeared in Albania in 1991. “My mother thought they weren’t real - she was too afraid to taste one!” Other tourists laugh in disbelief. I simply nod recalling my own “bananaless" childhood in the Soviet Union.
 
Exploring eerie underground bunkers and learning about incredible hardship under self-imposed economic isolation isn’t everyone’s idea of a summer holiday. After leaving Tirana I visit Albania’s picture-perfect castles of Berat, Gjirokastër and Shkodra, ancient Roman and Ottoman ruins at the archeological park of Butrint, swim in idyllic waters of the Ionian sea and hike in the majestic Accursed Mountains. In-between I travel by bus munching on sweet figs and I keep spotting creepy bunkers, popping by the road all over Albania. My mind travels back to the underground labyrinth of Tirana and its heart-breaking stories. Perhaps one needs a dash of bitterness to appreciate a perfect summer break.